Me and My Shadow
by DrerrRedclaw
Summary: Temari, Black Queen of the Sands, and an anniversary she'd rather forget. ShikaTema. Oneshot.


Me and My Shadow

She can hear them whispering, about her.

Their voices don't carry through the noise of the bar, they're trying to keep the conversation just below the threshold of human hearing. Still, she can hear them over the shouting of the drunks, the clinking of glass and countertops, the endlessly gurgling trickle of spirits poured and the explosive rush of beers served. She can hear them because they're sitting right next to her and they assume she's either deaf, stupid, or completely inebriated.

She's certainly inebriated, that's for damn sure. She can see them, two chuunin and a jounin who should know better, still armored and dirty from whatever it was they were out doing, sitting on their stools, ignorantly gossiping. Maybe they think she can't hear them because she's completely slumped over, her eyes half-closed and completely glazed, her cheek squished up against the warm, dusty countertop. Maybe they can't see her blink languidly in the dim neon and the hazy smoke in the air, maybe they can't see her eyebrow twitch everytime she hears her name with that hateful title attached to it.

Temari, the Black Queen of the Sand.

They're partly blurred, half-hidden behind a small, carefully balanced stack of empty shot glasses and a half-empty glass of water that isn't emptying itself very quickly. One of them casts a furtive glance over at her semi-conscious form where she is leaning on the end of the black slate bar, they rejoins his companions.

"They say she sold herself to a demon," says one, still whispering. Why do they bother if they think she can't hear them?

"I heard she learned from that rat bastard Orochimaru, before he died." As if.

"No, no. I heard she killed the Leaf's legendary shadow hermit and ate his heart to steal his powers," says another, propagating that worst of the rumours.

She shivers, and wills her hand up from where it's dangling against her thigh, but it doesn't move. Maybe she is as plastered as they think after all. She tries again, and this time she's sure that her thumb twitches in response. Another wave of the nausea that she's been fighting since about a half hour ago surges through her abused body, rushing out of its pen in her liver, but she corrals it back, keeping it down. She's only ever puked once in her life, and she had a damn good reason to try drinking herself to death that one time. It wasn't worth trying again.

"I'll believe that," says the first, "I'd never heard that one before, but I've seen her fight -- the things she can do!" His whisper comes out hoarse, almost spoken, laced with awe and fear.

"Like what?"

Ah. She was sure one of them sounded familiar, and now she knows who it is. Her thumb seems to have managed to lend some motivation to her wrist and forearm, and she begins the long drag up towards the countertop. Paradoxically, her mouth is dry, and that water is looking better and better with every passing second. Strange, given she's already been drinking all bloody night. She can smell her spills, sweet and bitter mingled on the polished stone surface under her cheek, and there is something oddly filthy about the thought that her hair is soaking it all up behind her. When her fingers reach the countertop, exhausted, they stick there, adhering. This place, she reminds herself, is a dive.

So is she.

"We were on a border patrol," the one who used to work with her says, conspiratorially, leaning in towards the group. "We all knew she was a tough one; you don't expect less from the sister of the Kazekage."

She snorts quietly. Maybe even inside her head, she's not sure her body is really going to do anything she wants it to tonight.

"We got ambushed, maybe a raid, maybe a team trying to cross the border that saw us coming, who knows. None of them lived to tell us about it. But they drew us in with an illusion, locked us in place by freezing the ground around our ankles. I guess they got cocky, because they came out of hiding and she killed them all."

She remembers that now, too, a distant memory so far removed from any of the important ones she'd relegated it to the back corners of her mind where thoughts went to die. How many people had she killed and forgotten about? It didn't matter, they were so long gone, so faded, so unimportant. Her balance shifts, and her weight now mostly rests against her impossibly huge fan where it's propping up her boneless, withered shape.

The storyteller looks over again, cocks a thumb out at that same fan. "Sucked 'em in, some kind of vacuum technique. And then, get this. Her shadow rips up from the ground, splits apart, stabs them all in the heart. Instant death, no survivors." He pauses, takes a sip of his beer, distilled from a root tuber and spiced with a scorpion extract. At least he's got decent taste in alcohol. "We didn't even need to be there. She's a one woman army."

That's too true. She loves what she does. Or used to. First it was her brother. Keeping him sane, keeping him safe. Keeping up with him. Then it was her duty, her patriotism, her job. Later, she just got used to it. Started to love it as much as she did her brother and the people she kept safe when she fought for them.

"No fear, no remorse," he concludes. "A born ninja, that one."

"I wouldn't be surprised if she did what you said she did...shadow control is a bloodline limit, I'm pretty sure, you can't just learn it from someone."

They're getting into technicalities. Her lips are so dry right now, she can't help but wonder why they aren't chapped, and every time her eyelids droop seductively she knows she's less than a second away from passing out completely if she gives in. But she hasn't done that in a long time, either, and she's too proud. Almost a year, to be exact.

"Yeah, and no one else in this village can do it. You think so? The shadow hermit? I heard he was unbeatable, always traps within traps within traps."

The shadow hermit. Idiots. They don't even know his real name. They don't even know how he died. Hell, they're proud she's the one who did it.

But they're right. She did kill him. She killed him. She killed him, she killed him. Temari, the Black Queen. Killed him.

Checkmate.

The storyteller shakes his head. "I don't know...if anyone could do it, it would be her. She's bloody smart."

She doesn't make a noise. Not a peep, not a whine, nothing, but the tears, gods, she can't stop the tears that well up and sting her, sifting through her intermingled eyelashes, washing out across the bridge of her noise sideways down to the counter. She's not supposed to cry, she can't, but she is.

Don't let them see her, she prays silently, head propped into her dark little corner with her hand over her eyes.

Another wave of cheers sweeps through the bar as someone orders another round and everyone joins in, crashing together, a cacophony of filthy drunken animals howling into the night, all completely ignorant of the broken woman hiding in the corner. Finally, her hand reaches up to cover her face, and she surreptitiously wipes away the tears, but she can't do anything about the pain. She can't hide how her green eyes are rimmed in red, can't hide the sallow bags under them. She can't hide how tired she is, all the energy squeezed out of her by the drink and the crushing ache in her chest. She can't even hear her heart beating, and she wonders if she's finally done it, finally poisoned herself into oblivion.

"Must have been some battle," one of them says, musing, returning to the group with one of the freebie beers being handed out. He licks the spill of cool froth from the edge of the glass, a minor boon in this most oppressive of climates.

"I'll bet. Incredible. You really think she ate his heart? I don't think I could do that, no matter how badly I wanted that kind of power."

"I'm not sure I'd want to; I think it haunts her." This is a not-to-subtle jab at her current state, and she realizes they're not even whispering now. She must be out cold if they haven't heard her respond to anything by now.

"I think she did. I really think she ate his heart. How else could she have learned all that?"

Her anger surprises her, flashing sudden and unannounced, surging through her body, a dam burst. Everything that's wrong with tonight is crushed before the towering waves of the fury that possesses her and she knows for a fraction of an instant that this is how Gaara must have felt all the damn time before the thought is swept away on an insensate tide. She's not even thinking as the muscles in her thighs and calves tighten of their own accord beneath the smooth cotton of her skirt and the spiderweb of her camo netting and she stands on her sandaled feet, furious. Her right hand reaches out, trembling, and she can feel a thousand eyes on her as she grabs a handful of those carefully stacked shot glasses and hurls them against the bar as hard as she can, shattering them all in a spiralling hurricane of silver shards.

When she turns, the other ninjas are shivering, eyes locked on her livid, contorted face as she rounds on them like a slavering pack of hounds cornering rabbits.

"I did not eat his heart," she hisses, just under her breath, but everyone in the room can hear her, even over the music. "He gave it to me."

Unbidden, her arm lashes out, grabbing the carrying strap of her fan and she stalks out into the night, not even bothering to sling it over her shoulder on the way. People part out of her way, an invisible hand pushing them backwards as they scrabble against each other to clear a path. The bartender doesn't even try to confront her about her tab.

No one confronts the Black Queen about her tab. It's suicide.

Outside, the guilt takes her, and she breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably as she staggers along the darkened edges of the adobe lined street, dragging her fan through the dust behind her. She's unable to stop the tears that spring forth anew because nothing she she can ever say will stop the rumours, the disservice to his memory. They haven't got a reason to believe whatever justification they think will salve her soul.

But they weren't there. They weren't there when she was used. They weren't there when she was the bait, because she was the only lure that would work. They weren't there when two years of planning by his enemies finally, finally trapped him in a net he almost slipped through. They weren't there when she let him die because she wasn't strong enough to save him. They weren't there when he finally gave her his heart, all of it, and the promise to match.

When she reaches her home, she realizes she might not have been conscious all the way back. She doesn't remember taking all of the turns, she doesn't remember seeing all of the streets, she doesn't remember hearing all the dogs that line her route. Her fan drops falls where she does and she kneels in the darkness, crumping. The door swings silently shut behind her, as her hands scrabble aimlessly at the amorphous shadow beneath her.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, hands shuffling against the cold tile, "I'm sorry," and she repeats this over and over again until she hasn't got any energy left. Drained, she sprawls, falling against the ground.

That's when she feels his hand, cold and lifeless, but just as gentle as she always remembers, softly brushing against her cheek. She can't see how her shadow has wrapped around her, cocooning her in its opaque black cloak, but she can feel him there, surrounding her, holding her steadily with lifeless arms. Cold lips brush against the nape of her neck, and she can't stop crying as she curls up into a ball. Her shadow follows, bracing itself against her, and in the dim light emanating from the street lamps outside it only has one ponytail, tied tight and high against the top of its head.

Her sobbing gradually fades into an exhausted whimper and she gives herself to him, to his fingers caressing her just like they did the very last time they made love, and he makes her forget his sacrifice, he makes her forget how he bound himself to her in desperation and saved her life if not his. He doesn't leave her until she falls asleep and she finally runs out of tears, even though it's exhausting and taxing on what little energy he can manifest.

Because she still loves him, and he refuses to leave anyone he loves alone.

OoOoOoO

Author's Notes:

Hammered out at about two in the morning a couple days ago in a fit of creativity designed to combat a nasty case of insomnia, revised a bit since for grammar, flow and style. Probably a bit dark for a romance fic, but whatever. Everyone knew the risks.


End file.
